" It’s not as if we can go somewhere else; the disasters on the moon and Mars colonies proved that. We have one very limited world, and although death has been defeated as completely as polio, people still must die. The ending of human life used to be in the hands of nature. But we stole it. Now we have a monopoly on death. We are its sole distributor. I understand why there are scythes, and how important and how necessary the work is… but I often wonder why I had to be chosen. And if there is some eternal world after this one, what fate awaits a taker of lives? —From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie "

― Neal Shusterman , Scythe (Arc of a Scythe, #1)